Life Drawing

I've started going (fairly regularly) to a Life Drawing class above the Royal Inn In The Park pub on Victoria Park. I've been meaning to get back into Life Drawing for a while, so it's good to finally be doing it on a regular basis.

5 minute poses...


15 minute pose...


30 minute pose...


30 minute pose...

Sketchbook Project 2015: Winter

I just finished another page for my Sketchbook Project 2015 sketchbook. The theme for my book is "Winter".

I've never watched Game of Thrones, but I'm guessing it's something like this, right?

Sketchbook Project 2015: Winter

I've signed up to take part in the 2015 Sketchbook Project. I've taken part in previous years and it's a fun project to be part of. You sign up, pay $25, and get sent a 32 page 105 x 148mm sketchbook which you then have until 31 March 2015 to fill and send back. Once they receive your sketchbook it then goes into a permanent collection at the Brooklyn Art Library where it is viewable by the public, as well as taking part in a touring collection.

There are various themes you can choose from as a starting point for your sketchbook, and this year I decided on the theme "Winter".

And I've just achieved the first major obstacle with any sketchbook: completing my first page! And I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. I found a quote by William Blake about Winter and drew an image to illustrate it: "In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy."



I used a Sky Blue Pentel colour brush pen to sketch out the image lightly, before inking it with a Zebra fude Brush pen, and then using the Pentel brush pen to colour the sky.

London Sketchbook Scavenger Hunt #BigDraw

Last night I joined a group of people taking part in the London Sketchbook Scavenger Hunt, a Big Draw event organised by Jenny and June from the StoryHands Illustration collective.

The theme for this year's Big Draw is "It's Our World" and Jenny and June interpreted this theme as a call to notice and appreciate what we see around us in the city, and in particular the city of London. Once everyone had arrived and been issued with their unique hand-made and responsibly sourced sketchbook (made from donated materials at the Children's Scrap Project charity) we set off...



The walk took in various locations around the city, some of which were familiar and others that I hadn't been to before. At each location we were given a list of things to draw, both from observation and imagination and a set amount of time in which to draw as many of the items as we could (usually between 10–15 minutes).


Image courtesy of StoryHands Collective

Jenny and June were great hosts and provided a bit of background information about the area at each stop before assigning us our drawing challenges. In keeping with the unknown nature of the evening, I'm not going to specifically mention where we went, and have removed the names from my photos below...











The evening was a lot of fun, and I found it good to only have a limited time to draw at each location, as it made me more instinctive with my drawing, working quickly to capture the essence of what I was seeing. And that quick drawing was taken to the extreme at the end of the night, after everyone had added up their scores for the evening, there was a Draw Off where we had to draw as many identifiable London Landmarks as we could in 60 Seconds...



I even ended up with a prize at the end!



Jenny and June will be running the event again on the 1 November and there's a Facebook Event page here: http://www.facebook.com/events/1487342084846994/. I'd definitely recommend it!